Coming up, break it down, everything that happened in the first NBA playoff weekend with Ryan Rissella next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network, where we have a new rewatch of us coming on Monday. It is the last episode of Rock Bottom Month. We are doing Hardcore with George C. Scott, a movie we've been circling for a long, long time. Turn it off. Turn it off. This movie is insane. You can watch it on Tubi. If you want to watch Hardcore, it is just... It's rock bottom. I'll tell you that much. It's going to be me and Chris and Sean doing that one. Then we will start doing some bangers because that's what I've promised you. Bangers from that point on. We also tried something on tonight's podcast. We went live for the first hour of it on youtube. Com/bilsimmons. We're going to be starting more live stuff with some of our Ringer podcast on some of the different YouTube channels. I didn't know how it was going to go, but it actually went pretty well, and it went pretty seamlessly. You can watch it on the YouTube channel if you missed it because we started it late at night, right after the last game.

But let's just get to the podcast. Me, Racillo. How about Pearl Jam? We're taping this right after Oklahoma City, New Orleans, which was the Ryan Risillo classic. We're going to hit round one. We are doing this live on YouTube. We're trying something out here. We'll see if it works. We'll see if either of us get fired. Okc New Orleans just saved an awful round one. I didn't know what we were going to do. I had a whole bunch of dumb games for us. And then what happens? We get a great game. We get a really athletic game. We get a game with some strategy and some bad strategy in the last couple of minutes and some really good shots by SGA. I texted you over the weekend. You're at the gym, which I think I tied my record for most times I've texted you over the weekend and you texted back, I'm at the gym. I said, What do you think the Pelicans' thunder line is? Because it had just come You were like, Mm-1.50 was your guess. It was minus 150 was your guess, and it was minus 650. Both of us were like, What the hell is going on?

This is going to be a great series, which it is. Now people know Pelicans were plus 450 for the series. I think this goes seven. This has a 70 feel. What do you think?

I think it's still okay seeing six. When you would set me up that way, then I go, Okay, well, if he's reaching out to me on a Saturday morning, this has to be an absurd number. I went the other way thinking, All right, well, maybe they have faith because New Orleans had some weird numbers where if you look at each team in the West or any team in the playoffs, they're two best players. There's some plus minus numbers that haven't been good. There's some starting five numbers there for the Pelicans that haven't been good. But if there's one thing that I've loved about this Pelican team the last couple of years is the depth and all the options and that so many of their players on the wing play defense. So then I was like, okay. And then when it went the other way, I'm like, okay, well, that's the analytics part of it where OKC is basically flawless, except for some of the rebounding issues.

Right, which we saw today. I was thinking, I didn't think about this until the game was going on. This is the draft pick palooza battle. Like these two young teams that also have a lot of draft picks coming down the road, and we're not even sure what their teams are going to look like over the next few years. But one of the interesting things was we talked about OKC at the trade deadline. Like, are they going to have more size? What happens in a playoff series when they play some center who's just having his way? That was Valenzunas today, and it didn't matter. Valenzunas What do you have? How many rebounds did he end up with? He was over 20, right?

20, right at 20.

Yeah. And was just overpowering Chet a couple of times. And you're watching it going, this is why we wanted them to get a center. And yet what happens at the end of the game, they pull Valenzunas because they need a little more mobility. They put Nance in that spot. But there was this moment with a minute left when they got those three offensive rebounds, and then they got to stop. And it just seems like, just call time out, put Valenzuunis back in the game so you can run the same stuff was working, and they just didn't do it. Brandon Ingram is getting locked up by your guy, Dourt. That was a Dourt referendum game. I left him off all defense, and I was kicking myself the whole game.

I did not. I know. It always goes back to Jeff Van Gunde whenever me and I would talk about, What do you do with Luca? It's like, Well, you don't really do anything with Luca. But then there's just the thought that if there's someone that has at least a chance to just match him physically. I mean, it still seems ridiculous because Luca would still end up with 30 points. But yeah, Dore had Ingram all messed up. Because Ingram usually can get to a spot. If he's not going to go right up, he can work it a little bit and figure out a better angle, and he's going to shoot over most defenders. When he got stuck against Dore, it was over. When he hit that layup late off the steal, you could still see it's like, Oh, wait, Dore is there. There was still a little hesitation. Then when he got called for the offensive foul, which, look, he initiated enough contact for that to be called if Dore is going to sell it, so I didn't have really an issue with the call. But with Ingram, the frustrating thing about him, and I think this has been the case for a long time.

When he is awesome, it's scary. He had a little stretch with the Lakers in the second game. You're like, Oh, he's feeling it.

It's a little Durantish.

Right. When he's bad, it's bad.

Well, today it looked like Fiba Ingram Too soon?

I love your international basketball recall.

Oh, my God. Today I was watching... I've decided Trey Murphy as my favorite non superstar in either conference. I just love him. I was thinking, Kawhi is on team USA. I don't think that's going to end up maybe transpiring. Just give Trey Murphy the 12 spot. Just put him in. Young guy, he's not going to care if he plays. You can throw him out there. He'll hit threes, play defense. He is one of the most additive guys in the league. It's exactly the guy they should want. I mean, that's the same reason Drew holidays on the team, right? Just additive guys that don't take anything off the table. Trey Murphy, if we're doing an additive guys who don't take stuff off the table, all-star team, he has to be on it, right?

I love him. What I love is where I think his game eventually will get to, because I forget. I think it was one of the playing games, and the broadcast was talking about how he had added this stuff to his game, the perimeter stuff, the ball handling, getting to a spot. I wouldn't say it's perfect and smooth yet, but that was the great thing about before the draft with him is you see the three-point numbers, you see the size and the shot, and you're like, Okay, this guy's going to play in the league a long time. And then the more you watched him, you went, Whoa, wait, There's another element to his game entirely where he's not going to be one of these guys just stuck in the corner offensively, spacing the floor. He can put it on the floor a little bit. I don't know that it's something where you're going to be clearing out for him the whole time, but that part of his game is there. If it ever develops, that's just another They're part of this Pelican's roster that I've always liked so much.

You, like me, you watch basketball for two straight days. This OKC New Orleans game was played with a speed and an intensity that was pretty inconsistent. Over the course of the weekend, right? But there was some youth and just- It was sloppy, really sloppy early, man.

They couldn't shoot it, so yeah. Yeah.

But it was fun. But there was a franticness that I really liked because especially after going Dallas-Klipper game, which we'll talk about later, where it took Dallas basically an entire hour to wake up and realize they were in the playoffs. There's been some other ones where we just couldn't get the matchups right. This one was just two young teams that knew each other really well, great crowd, and it was just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I do wonder, though, now New Orleans has to basically... They have to win four or the next six, but they probably felt like they let this one slip away. Right? This felt like, Man, we had this. This was sitting there. So now it's almost like you got to win five out of seven to win this series. It's one of those optical illusion game ones.

Look, we both like this series, but there was never... You've never had moments where you were like, Hey, the Pelicans might win this whole thing. Was it before? Was it their moment?

The series or all four rounds?

No, I meant just the series.

I thought they had a chance to win the series. I did. I really thought I would have picked... I bet I don't know, okay, C in seven, which was, I think, plus 400, plus 450, something like that. But I really thought this was going to be a long series, especially like, Zion is going to come back at some point, right? You'd think maybe the second half of the series, who knows? A couple of other things I just wanted to point out from this game, and then we'll go to one of our gimmicks. Cody Zeller, who didn't play tonight, but was rocking the big Normatech back brace, just in case. I'm not sure if you saw Stay ready. You don't know. You got to stay ready, right? He had the electro raise going. Gordon Hayward, I thought a couple of really good handshakes heading in the timeouts and a couple of good high fives and backslaps. I noticed that from him. We're going to play a gimmick. What's the one thing you saw? Oh, you know what? Actually, I got a different gimmick. Let's do this really quick. Redraft. Favorite Round 1. No, no. Just Favorite Round 1 series.

Go. Your number one favorite right now, going forward. Rest of the next two weeks. Series you're most excited for, number one.

If I can only watch one series, it's New York, Philly.

I had that as well. That was my number one. What's your number two?

Phoenix, Minnesota.

Oh, interesting. I had that fourth. So my number two.

Clippers, Dallas.

Lakers, Denver. I thought that game one, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lebron ran out of gas. Dilo was terrible. We'll talk about it when we get to it. But I thought those teams know each other pretty well at this point. I thought Jokuj and Davis were just outrageous in game one, and I just want to see those teams play. What's your number three?

Okay, number three. It's probably not any of the other three E-Series.

Well, I had OKC New Orleans as my number three.

Yeah, I would say number three is OKC New Orleans. Okay.

So I have Phoenix, Minnesota, fourth. Do you have Dallas, Clippers or LA, Denver, fourth?

Dallas, Clippers. I was really... That would have been higher if Kawhi was healthy because I was picking the Clippers. I was going to zag on all the public momentum for Dallas. I think you knew that because we had talked about it before. But then when you get the Leonard update and you just go, I mean, I can't pick them now. And then who knows? I mean, today was so ugly. I don't even know that I worry about it for game 2 for Dallas. I It was just that bad.

There was more than public momentum. It was a landslide/bedding tsunami. The mind moved. I think Dallas was underdogs to start with the series. And by the time the game came today, after the quad, even though it was in the like the 150 area. Last three series, would you mention were Orlando, Cleveland, Indiana, Milwaukee, and Boston, Miami. What's your least favorite out of those three?

Maybe Milwaukee, Indiana, just because I don't know what it's going to mean. I don't know other than... I think Yannis will probably come back. You were joking about Zion. Yannis has a really good history of coming back. Did you see the way the schedule plays out? They play game 2 on Tuesday, and then game 3 isn't until Friday.

Right. Well, by the way, the same for the Clippers with Kawhi. I think the Clippers have an interesting decision of, do they basically roll the dice, try to get to a more game with Adam and get him for game 3 a few days later? You're up nothing.

But I never know what to believe with Kawhi. With Yannis, I'm more willing to be like, Okay, fine. But with Kawhi, even though Taillou is pretty blunt about it, remember one time when everybody was, sir? He's like, I don't know what's going on. He just said it. He said, We're definitely getting them back. We're definitely getting him back. Maybe he's just being completely honest and blunt again, but I think I would do that if I were a head coach anyway, even if I didn't know, just to mess with the other team, especially after getting the first one.

You're saying you don't know what to expect with a guy who He hasn't finished three of the last four post-seasons?

He's Don Draper, man. You're like, Where are you?

I'll tell you, I think this live YouTube, there's a little hop in your step tonight. I like it.

It's a danger. We got game two. Hey, I'm sorry, I'm in Palm Springs.

All right, we're going to play. I texted you to write down the one thing you saw that made you tweak or change an we had about each series. We'll start with OKC New Orleans since it just happened. Did you see anything over the last two and a half hours that changed your mind at all about anything with that series?

I feel like the Pelicans have been building more minutes for Nantes in this smaller lineup. And as I was watching this game play out, I mean, Valence Unis is the reason they kept him in this first half. Pelicans couldn't hit a shot, but they were plus 12 second chance points. And then that swung. And I thought they ran a lot of good stuff with Valenceunis. They'd post them. It's just asking a lot, even though Chet's really positioned well. That Chet fought even harder in the second half against him defensively. I mean, the Chet block that he had on Nantes. But they closed with Nantes. Look, it's Willy Green's team. And I'm not saying the game plays out differently if they go the other way, but I'm really fascinated by that decision because I can understand wanting to play small with Nance, but it's also playing into OKC's hands a little bit.

Yeah, they were super happy with, Hey, CJ, Nance is going to sell you the pick and roll the basket, and you're going to pass to Nance. We're totally happy with Nance deciding your offense in the biggest positions of the game. He was doing the Nerkage Going downhill, then kicking out to somebody. I think Nantes has been a semi-revelation over the last few weeks. I agree. Where it's like, I don't even... Who else in the league reminds you of him right now? The type of player he is, where it's like he's not totally a center. He's not really a powerful- Dwight Powell? Yeah, it's like a good Dwight Powell. My revelation from this, just what we saw tonight, is I just think New Orleans matches up really well with OKC. Okc is probably going to win the series, but New Orleans has good matchups. I thought Herb gave SGA as much problem as I've seen anybody give SGA. There's going to be games where Valenzuunas just puts fouls on Chet, and Chet's going to have to come out. I thought Chet was good today. I actually liked how he played. There's going to be games where he just puts three fouls on him in the first half, and we don't see Chet again.

Dourt on Ingram on the reverse, I thought was another interesting one where it's like, This is a bad matchup for New Orleans. But it just seemed like all over the place there were bad matchups. It's not really an Alvarado series because when OKC all their dudes, they could just find Alvarado and go at them. But this was the only series that we had out of the eight where I was like, Oh, man, if they do this, then they're going to have to do this. And then if they do this, then They're going to have to do this. It's one of those, which I think that's why it just feels 70 to me. If you had to pick one seven-game series out of the eight, if I told you one of these eight are going seven, who would you pick? Because I would pick this one. I would have picked this one.

I would have picked Clipper's Mavericks. Maybe I'm letting history play a little bit there. I just felt like there was going to be a very quick Clippers correction if all those guys were playing together. Look, we got it today without Leonard, or it was going to be a bit of a reminder of like, Hey, we actually, even though Harden's the newer part of this, I think they'd think of themselves as completely comfortable no matter who the opponent was. You're just not going to see that in certain spots. Like SGA, they went five plus minutes without a field goal. The Pelican's defense, how hard they worked to have a second defender towards SGA, they were trying, and he still ends up with what, 30? So about 28. And there was a three that he took on a catch and shoot three, which you just don't see a lot from him. And it was during that stretch where they hadn't hit a field goal, and you could just see him being like, Hey, this might be the best shot we get. So I'm going to take it right now. And then he gets the N1 on CJ, and then they get the really easy switch at the top.

It's just at that point, SGA is just another level of any offensive creator for the Pelicans. Then you have the Jalen Williams third quarter, where you don't know who the second guy, like Ingram and CJ, and then maybe it's Trey. But at least with the Thunder, you know. You know it's SGA and Jalen Williams. There's no like, one of those guys is going to have an eight-point game. It's just not really going to happen. So maybe I wasn't as bullish as you were saying that this would be seven. I respect the Pelicans defensively. I'm sure they're frustrated with how well they did to close this one. But I like closers. I like efficient closers. And the Thunder have one of the best ones in the league.

I like that they were playing Wildest Late. A couple of things for the YouTube stream.

Jyd.

Old-school WW. You can get these on eBay. These are really nice. Oh, cool. I'm checking out. They're thick old-school glasses where if they break, just five pieces shatter and you hope you don't get a vein cut. I also wanted to mention I am a little sunburned. I don't know if you noticed.

I thought you got makeup for this.

Yeah, no makeup. I should have had some bronzer. I played tennis yesterday, hour and a half, around lunchtime. I can't tell you how well I played. It was really like the rest of the weekend was just the cherry on the Sunday. Me and my friend Howard, we played these two British guys. I think they were feeling like they were going to beat us. We took it to them, 7, 5, 6, 1, hit some big shots, was moving around great. Felt awesome, but I didn't put it on enough sunscreen. I'm pretty bright red right now.

There you go. You are feeling yourself, but I think it works good. It's a good hue.

I'll tell you, when I can see the ball, I can still hit it, Rasella. I can still sling it. I can still sling it that way. I can sling it that way. At the On the other hand, I still got it. We're going to take a break for the podcast and stay on YouTube. Watch this. The road to the NBA final starts now. New customers on Fando can go on their own playoff run with $150. Just place any $5 bet, you'll $150 bonus bets, win or lose to use during the NBA play-ups. You could bet on three-pointers made in Sixers, Knicks, over-under-point totals for Lakers Nuggets, whatever you want. I hope you bet on the boost we did for the series with the Knicks and the Nuggets. We boosted that combo to plus 170 over the weekend, and we're trying to keep my boost streak alive, which is officially a streak. By the way, FanDuel now live in our nation's capital, Washington, DC, home of Joe House. Just go to fanduel. Com/bs to get started FanDuel, official sports spending partner of the NBA. You must be 20 plus or 18 plus in DC. President selects states, game prom call, win or have your gambler, or visit rg-help.

Com. First online real money wager, only $10 for a deposit required. Bonus issue does not withdraw, but bonus bets that expire seven days after a seat. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. Things that made you tweak or change an opinion you had about a series, you can only pick one thing. Let's do Clippers Dallas because I went to that game. This shocked me. Look, Luca didn't play well. The Mavs were asleep for an hour. You throw the game away. It was a bad performance. Clippers were really good. They made a bunch of threes. They played with a lot of energy. I thought the crowd actually really helped them.

I think Harden settled like, Hey, I'm up for this. Harden was fantastic. Yeah.

Okay, here's the thing I took away. They had a lot of trouble with Zubats, and he really took it to Gaffard and Lively in a big boy way. I don't know if he's going to do that every game, but big picture, it made me think like, This team doesn't really have an Irina Gardeochitch. Not that anyone does.

Or Zubats.

He or Zubats. But the way he bullied them and back those guys down, I like Gaffard, but it almost made me wonder like, Oh, is this why Presty didn't want to trade for Gaffard? Because he was just backpedaling and giving up three-foot jump hooks and layups, and he wasn't strong enough to keep Zubats off. He can't keep Zubats off. Good luck with Jokuj. But they had a lot of trouble. Eventually, they had to play Kluba in the second half, and they had to dump both of those guys. Why are you laughing?

Just that we are on a gaffer and OKC just content.

It's just a streak. Yeah, it's seven in a row.

Yeah, I don't know how many weeks in a row we've been able to get it in there, but we have. Thank God, OKC won that game. Here's what I think you're... It's the biggest overall point that I took from the game. So I think you're right on. And you were there, so I'm going to defer to you on what you saw here. But real quick, they bring in Gaffer, and then we see all these numbers that improve because Dallas was incredible second half of the season. And there's some real wins there when you look at the schedule. The paint defense numbers went There was a stretch, I think at one point, it depends on how you want to box it in and be like, Hey, Dallas is the best as far as opponents points in the paint. But overall, second half of the season, it wasn't the best, but it was much improved. The rebounding improved. There was just a bunch of stuff that you felt like was really good. And then immediately, Zubats is just beasting everybody. And you're like, okay, wait, the one thing we may have been worried about your roster construction seemed to have been solved.

And then within minutes, and some of It's how teams do a really good job of getting a bad defender matched up with another guy, but then he ends up in the baseline. And now all of a sudden, it's like, okay, there was one play where they sent two defenders at Paul George, and then Zubats is fronting inside the restricted area, and Kyrie's behind him. You're just like, This is over. But I think the energy thing was really weird. It was almost like Dallas was playing as if, Hey, normally everybody lets us set up here first, and then we dismantle everybody. That's, at least on TV, I don't know what you saw, how it felt like just Dallas. I mean, to have an eight-point second quarter is not what you'd expect from this team.

Yeah, I took my son, who didn't understand why Dallas wasn't trying, and asked me, I thought this was a playoff game. Their energy in the first half with how hard the Clippers were playing, and Luka was pissed off about it. It goes to your point. Luka was like, it was like he was playing at the Equinox, and a couple of guys in the other team in the pickup game were trying too hard. He was getting off about it. Hey, Bob, settle down. It's a fucking pickup game. He had that, and it's like, No, actually, it's the playoffs. They're trying to defend you and bang bodies with you. I don't think Dallas was able to match the energy until the second half. First half, they were like... Kyrie was really the only one that I felt like was moving at the same speed of the Clippers. But yeah, I'll tell you, man, look, Luca, I voted for him third for MVP, you had him second. He's really Really doughy in person. I was shocked.

Are you changing your Dallas Outlook? We talked about it.

I talked about it for five minutes because we both thought, first of all, Ty Lou, who I thought coached a great first half, and he just kept putting Luka on pick and rolls. They were just clearly trying to tire him out. It was a strategy based on the fact we don't think this guy's in shape. They were just running them. They were just trying to put miles on him and make him tired. By the second quarter, there were a little breaks and he had his hands on his knees. He was getting really pissy. I don't know if they showed it on TV, but in the second half, in the fourth quarter, it was one of the times when the Mavs looked like they were crawling back and they're trying to get it into the midteens. They had the ball and Luka drove down. It looked like he was going to shoot and he dumped it to Cleba, and Cleba missed it and went out of bounds. Luca was so fucking mad at him. He started screaming at him. He walked back down the court and there was a foul or something, and he started yelling at the Dallas bench about Cleba.

I don't know. He's recreating how Cleba screwed it up. It was just weird. He was just pissed off the whole game. I don't know what that's going to mean for the Clippers in the second game because I feel like he's going to... I predict a vengeful game, too, for him. But I was surprised. He didn't seem totally in shape to me, which maybe this is who he's been all year. I just haven't seen him in person in a few months.

Well, it hasn't seemed to be much of a factor.

It doesn't.

Even if it's true.

He moves at this slow speed that he just gets to wherever he wants all the time.

I would have been pissed if I were him. And look, Kyrie, they had a cutaway to him on the bench with the team, and he was like, I don't know if it's because he knew the camera was right on him or not or whatever. He's a pretty vocal guy with his teammates. But if I were those two guys, I'd be pissed, too. I mean, look at the box score of this one. I mean, those two combined for 64. Luka didn't shoot it well. Kyrie did. P. J. Washington is the only other guy in double figures with 11 points. Josh Green is the only guy that I thought was out there going like, Hey, I'm going to play my ass off. I don't know if we're going to see more Josh Green or if Josh Green solves all their problems in his nine energy minutes. You know who didn't play in the first half?

Josh Green. He only played seven guys in the first half, which I thought was weird, too, because they're playing Tuesday night. Usually, game one, you're throwing dudes out there and trying to see who looks ready, who looks fine. This time, they just played seven, and they weren't even playing that well. And then Josh Green came in. I thought they needed his athleticism. I actually like how he played.

It was 29 points. They got it to 15, and I'm watching going like, Wait, is this actually going to happen? And then you keep thinking back to that second quarter. But I always feel like the game is played to the score. The Clippers are just not going to play as hard as they need to play up 29 as they would have had been if it were 15 earlier on. Look, Harden was incredible, set the tone early. Zu was also just beasting everybody, as we'd already mentioned. And then Paul George, if you look at the final stat line, you might be like, Okay, that's not that big of a deal, 8 for 20. I thought he had two threes, and then the after time out lay-He had four huge shots. Yeah. Easily four. It might even be six. When you add up those shots where any time it felt like Dallas was tasting momentum, Paul George just completely shut it down. If they get Kawhi back, this is not an upset despite the momentum that Dallas had.

Harden was terrific. I just thought that was the best I've seen him in person in a while.

He had struggled. If you look at shooting splits after the All-Star break, he was under 40% from the floor. He was, I think, right at 30 from three. The scoring was down to 14. As we always talk about on the Sunday pot, I'm like, I just want to avoid being tricked by somebody.

Well, that's why I don't want to be tricked by this game. I'm just trying not to overreact to it.

Especially these two teams. We could say it a million times, let's see what game two looks like. We all lose our minds every year after only one game to go on. I actually think it was so bad for Dallas. I wouldn't be shocked if they came back in in one game, two, even with Kawhi.

We were looking at the threes. I was telling Ben, sometimes when you're at games, you just have to look at who's the made threes, and that's usually what the score is. Dallas was three for 19 at one point. They just couldn't make anything. Some of the threes were good shots. They just weren't going in. I wanted to mention, I mentioned this before in the pod, Westbrook as a bench guy, he was awesome in the first half, but The Clippers crowd, it's a crowd that really likes the team, and they really like Westbrook. He really plays to the crowd, and he turns, and he makes little gestures, and when he makes a play, he looks out. He's the spirit animal of the crowd. Every time he comes in, it shifts the energy of the game. I think we talked about when he was hurt for a while that they missed it. There's something about whatever he brings. I did not think. I was trying to think of other players.

Alvarado, I think it's like this. He comes into the game and it's just his energy changes the whole vibe of it.

Yeah, but here's the difference. Westbrook used to be one of the best players in the league. I was trying to think of other players who used to be at the heights that Westbrook was at who reinvented themselves. Like Bill Walton did in the mid '80s, out of necessity, because he could only play 20 minutes a game. Westbrook used to play 40 minutes a game. Even on Washington a couple of years ago, he was playing 40, 41, 42 minutes a To reinvent yourself as like, I'm just going to come in, guns blazing for the nine minutes I'm in. I'm going to try to get every rebound. I'm going to try to get out of leaves. I think he deserves a lot of credit. I also wrote down on my notes, I wrote, Josh Green, First Night in Prison Face. Again, I thought Josh Green played good. But sometimes the guys come in and it's like in the prison movies when the guys come in with the blankets and there's the one guy who's like, Oh, man, it's not going to go well for that guy. In Shotcaller, that one guy comes in and say, Oh, man, he looked too nervous.

He came in with the first night in prison face, but then was awesome. Now I'm like my radar for first night in prison face is off. Indianapolis.

On it.

Just mark that one down.

Yeah, no, I wrote it down.

It's good. Indiana, Milwaukee. What was your one takeaway from this game that changed your opinion of the series slightly? Was it Dame Lillard hitting 35 points in the first half or was it something else?

I couldn't believe it. He hit 35 and a half. Do you know what he had for the game?

Thirty-five.

So the Pacers were favored. When they go with the live line, they were minus a point and a half in this one, and then they threw it up there.

I bought this for the pod.

You bought a Dame Lillard. Is there a watch on that?

What's going on? Yeah, it's a Dame. It's a Dame time bobblehead. I bought it, figuring if he sucked in the play, it would be funny, and if he was great in the playoffs, it would be funny. Dame time, 35 in the corner. Dame time.

It's a good thing you have a family because I remember there was this old guy in a neighboring town that had an antique place, but it wasn't really an antique place. It was just all of his stuff. If I could just see an 80-year-old version of you being like, Hey, this is my Joe Prunty bobblehead. This is not for sale. Do you know who this is? It's Doc Rivers.

Yeah, it's the Doc Rivers Celtics bobblehead. I have him and Dame together. Dame was unbelievable and made a bunch of crazy threes and even made his old-school He'll step back 29-footer to end the quarter, play off three. It was like, play off to aim. It's like, all right, let's see. I'm not going to get too excited because a week ago, he could not get a shot off against Orlina, but he looked awesome in that game. Here's what jumped out to me. Halliburton, who ended up not voting for OMBA. There was a question of, is he rope it open this a little bit down the stretch, saving himself for the when the playoffs start, boom, there's another gear. I didn't see it today. There was no other gear, and he's still not jumping off the TV to me.

He was bad. I mean, it wasn't even that he was bad. It was just that he was so inactive. I was tracking his shot attempts. I mean, basically, when the game was over, he had, I think, four total shot attempts. He had taken a fifth. He had two late ones there, so he ended up with seven. But over the bulk of the game, I think it was four shot attempts. So it's really concerning because it felt like Siakam was the only one keeping him in this. But it's one of the better offenses, right? Post All-Star break. There's a lot of stuff to like about the Pacers here, the uncertainty about Giannis, the history through the regular season, taking the five games. But apparently, all those games were before Doc even became head coach. So I think that's That's the thing that you have to think about. But the Pacers play with great pace. We know they stink on defense, but they shoot it well. They started 014 from three. This thing was a disaster. My favorite possession in the entire game is He's 58, 29. Dame's gone nuts again, and they come out of a timeout.

Pacers miss a three. Lillard has the ball. Nemhardt is like, All right, I got this.

Yeah.

He gets right up into him. Dame brings it over half court, and it just goes right past him. It wasn't even nasty. He just got around him. And then Niesmith is a low man, and he doesn't even watch. You're like, How can you guys have this guy lighting you up like this and then not... The Pacers Clippers defense, man, it is so bad. So even with all these offensive numbers and the fact that they finished 20 and 12 in their last 32 games and the Siakam piece and Halliburton being back, I think it's the worst performance by far. I mean, even with Dallas, because at least it was the Clippers. I just thought the Pacers today were gross, and considering people were wondering, Hey, do they have a chance at this?

I'm not going to cross them off, but that That was not what I wanted for them in game one. I thought they're going to win this series, but yikes. Moving on. Dame, did we give Dame enough credit? Because that was awesome.

35? It felt good. It was like the old Portland stuff where you throw in a Portland playoff game. I know there's times I can sound like I'm critical of him, and that's really just only because of, okay, but we've talked about this guy being one of the 10 best players in the league for multiple years, and we know he's a little bit older, but it needs to be a little bit better. And then sometimes I wonder, is he frustrated because he just can't do everything and have it all be on his own terms for a Portland team that generally wasn't all that good? So I'd ask myself those questions. But you want to talk about just being ready for a playoff moment, like how short the list is of guys that are more ready for that moment than he is. It was just a nice reminder to see him look like the Portland guy where you're just like, What are you supposed to do?

It was like me in doubles yesterday.

Did he say that? I think it's only in the nba. Com postgame presser they It wasn't in-game.

I don't know if he compared himself to me in the doubles, but it was the same thing. He would be shocked. Howard said to me, We got to beat these guys. I'm like, You're right, we have to. I got to dip back in the time machine. I got to get my first serve in. Just let me take everything. I got to be aggressive at the net, and I got to just hit my forehands with abandon. I knew what Dane was feeling today.

Real quick, though, too. Let's just add this in. I think Middleton looks really good. You don't?

No, I do. He's I'm going to say a third of a step slower than he used to be, but he still gets to all his spots and he still gets the shots that he wants.

Eighty-four %?

Eighty-one. It's a 81, 82 range. Okay. Boston, Miami. I have a great one for this, but you go first. Joe Mizzola, want to know after controversial part of my take appearances?

What was controversial about it?

I don't know.

The more everybody gets know him, they're like, What? I love it.

He is a first-class goofball, man. He's growing on me, too. I like today when they asked him about the Tatum Taylor Martin play, and he was like, I was excited. I couldn't wait to see how Tatum was going to respond. He was genuinely excited. I think he would have enjoyed if there was a Chevy match.

I think he's the only coach in the NBA where if he were in season five of succession with a main plot line, it would just make sense. What would he be?

Who would his succession character be?

He would just have to be his own, but he'd just be in the mix.

Oh, he would just be Joe Missoula?

Yeah.

He became friends with Kendall and he went to Kendall's bachelor party?

That sounds great. You guys got a lot of doors in here. All right, so what are you asking me? Is there anything that made me change my mind? Something that I want to see more of?

Yeah, you can say there wasn't.

Here's what my biggest take from it was. If this series is like this, I think Boston loses game two of the next round because this was essentially being outside and having an hour as a kid. Just three-pointer after three-pointer. It could have made even more. I almost think it could lead to a bad habit hangover because I don't know that you're ever going to play another team in the playoffs. I know they shoot a ton of threes, but today was just... I think guys were screwing up. Drew caught a ball where he didn't even catch it, and he shot it from three. They're going to win the series. It was a classic Miami first quarter where you're like, Wait, it was 17 to 2, and now it's close. How the hell did that happen? I don't know if you have something more significant from this one because I just don't know what you would see that would make you change your mind about anything. But I just think it's going to play out a very specific way. And Boston may be like, Okay, we can't do that now. We can't do what we just did against them in their zone.

Any regrets from the Miami fans, Chaining, We Want Boston at the end of the playing game Friday night, you think? You think regret set in at any point?

No. I think people chant.

They just chant stuff?

I mean, Knicks fans were chanting Fuck Trey Young after they beat Philly.

Right.

Which, I got to be honest, just one guy outside of MSG starting it and then 100 other people being like, great, great chant.

Good chant. I thought there was a chance Miami could steal a game in this series, and I'm still not rolling it out, but they're going to have to muck it. It's weird, and we're going to talk about Lowry later, but it It was a game where they really missed the Lowry mucking up guy who did three on-the-line things and just changed it, made it more of a hockey game. Wasn't enough of a hockey game today.

Did you think it was a code read by Caleb Martin on Tatum?

No, I thought he got shoved from behind by Drew holiday, which everyone missed that part. I watched the replay. I think he was a little off balance and crashed into him.

The first time I saw it, I thought he ran at him knowing what he's doing. But the more I saw it, Tatum gets up in the air. I think Martin expected to meet him in the ground.

Guys don't try to hurt each other like that in basketball games unless... If they do, it's a repeated thing where they're known for it. Here's the thing I took away from the game. Caleb Barton today. 29 minutes, 4 points, 0 for 4 from three, which, of course, sent me in a rabbit hole for his stats last year. 2003, ECF, 19.3 points a game. He shot 60%, 49% from three, 22 for 45 for threes in the series. I looked up in the basketball reference where they have the game scores where you can see whatever their weird system is to rate the game. Four of his best five playoff games ever happened in the Eastern Conference Finals in '23. Seven of his best 10 playoff games ever happened in that Eastern Finals. In 2024, he played 64 four games. He only played three games that had a score better than his four best games in the Eastern Conference Finals. And it just made me think, what an unbelievable fucking Black Swan. I keep saying Black Swan event on the podcast, But the Caleb Martin leaving his body for two weeks, I don't know what that was, but there's not a lot of examples of that in Celtic history of a guy who's been, whoever he is, 99% of the time, and then for whatever reason in that series, He's left his body.

Well, we brought it up a million times because you're trying to figure out how is this going to happen? Because if there's the thing we didn't like about Miami last year was the offense. The one thing you're definitely not going to like about it now is their offense with no Butler, no Rozier, and why Lowry isn't there because they figured those are the Rozier minutes. So I don't even know what's worth breaking down on it. But yes, to remember the Caleb Martin stretch to go back through that, there was a number that said it was the biggest jump in win shares per 48 of a baseline guy's number was, and then to do it for a series.

Like in history of the league?

Yeah. No one had ever done that.

The only thing that made me feel good about it last year was it was like, maybe this is a belated breakout for him. Now, he's not going to shoot 60% field goal, but maybe he made a leap, and this is the player he is.

Yeah, and then he shot in the 30s.

And then this season, he came back.

Right. Against Denver, he scored seven points a game. It's basically Joe Flacko. Yeah.

Going backwards. Let's do an easy one, and then we'll take a break. Cleveland, Orlando. Both of us really had our fingers crossed for Orlando. First game of the day, Rocky. Harris, Ingles, Fultz, Cole-Anthony, a combined over 19. My big takeaway was I was really worried about Orlando's offense. But wow. Now I'm at another level because all they were doing was building a wall for Palo and telling Palo, Yeah, you're going to have to go through a couple of guys if you want to get to the rim. Then it was just guys jacking up shots. It was really rough. They were so good defensively, Orlando, and yet still down 15, 17, 19, 15, 20, 18. They just couldn't get baskets successively. I don't know how that's changing, Marcelo.

I thought because of who Cleveland had been, that, okay, this is good. Like, oh, Cleveland wants Orlando. They're going to tank that game against Charlotte, try to avoid all the traffic elsewhere. But it also means- The JT Thor, the greatest moment of JT Thor's career. But it also puts you on the Boston line. When it was happening, I was like, Is this really actually the right move? But Paulo is probably watching the Dallas game going, Man, these guys have a lot of help because it was awful. And Paulo is their best scorer. He's their best creator, and he's actually, I think, their best playmaker. So it's not that Mowbley shuts him down, it's that How much can you ask him to do? And I know he had the nine turnovers, but watching the game, I didn't feel like, Oh, this guy's just screwing up all over the place. Nobody else was doing anything. And even Franz, who just hasn't had a great year after last year, he ended up with 18 points, but that wasn't a real 18. I think he had eight of those after the game was over. I just think it's great that Cleveland on the other side, he just didn't know what to think of Mitchell.

The Mitchell Denver series from four years ago is always in the back of my mind of what he's capable of doing in a playoff series where he went nuts against them and lost in game seven after scoring 36 a game. But it's really alarming, I think, if you're Orlando. I also think the Isaac part of it, which is so much fun, it's almost useless against Jared Allen.

Here's what I'll say in defense of Orlando. So they gave up 33 in the first quarter, and Cleveland hit some threes. But as the game went on, I thought their defense figured out Cleveland. They scored. Their next quarters were 20, 20, and 24. But in general, I thought the pace moved toward Orlando's way, and it just felt like... I didn't feel like they were far away from them in the second half. I'm not giving up on the magic in this series. I know that's stupid, but I just think this is going to be a muck-muck. The over-under on this series in game one was I think it started at 2:09.5, and then it dropped to 2:07. Was the over-under for that game. It ended up they scored 190 combined.

180?

180 combined. Now it's 2:03. Vegas has dropped it six points from where they launched it in the first game, and I think 2:03 is too high.

That's what 51 free throws combined.

I don't think these two teams can score 200 plus points. I don't. You'd have to have Jonathan Isaac going 4 for four from 3 and Struce goes six for... There'd have to be some weird '03 stuff. I just think this is going to be a rock fight. I don't know if that's a bad thing for Orlando yet. We saw the same thing with Palo. It's going to be really hard. He's got no help. Maybe a little more faults as this series goes along. He was the closest to looking like a point guard that they had. But it's hard not to watch them and just think, What What is this team going to do this summer with all the cap space? Because this is a great situation for Paul George, somebody awesome, to be like, You know what? It'd be fun to play for those guys. If you just put Paul George on the Magic team, it'd be great. We're going to take one more break and keep going. Okay, very excited to talk about this game. Denver and the Lakers. Lebron was awesome. Lebron threw a great six innings, Rusillo. That might be who he is at this point in time as a playoff guy because he's 39 years old.

He's been in the league 21 years. I don't know if he can do that for two and a half hours against a team as good as Denver. That's not my takeaway. What was your takeaway?

That they had an epic Anthony Davis game. He played 45 minutes. I don't know if that's past the line of, are you getting the best minutes of him? I know it's easy to point to after they lose, but they've lost nine straight against this team. I don't know if... I think the branding of the Lakers makes people think that they're in this series way more than evidence would tell us that they are.

The line dropped. It ended Right up at plus 3:30 by the time the series started, it was like, Jesus, who's betting the Lakers? They're going to beat Denver? Somebody going to get injured? Nobody's beating Denver. I thought that was one of the best games I've ever seen them play. I thought Jokuj was also awesome. That was probably my second favorite game of the weekend. I thought those guys absolutely went at it at the highest possible level of basketball. I was really impressed by Davis because Jokuj, he's one of the best offensive players in the history of the league, and Davis went toe to toe with them. I didn't think other than LeBron, I didn't think anyone in his team played well. So it was impressive. My takeaway. D'angelo Russell sucked in this game and did not resemble regular season D'Angelo Russell. And it got me thinking, I was like, Have I ever seen D'Angelo Russell play a good playoff game? And I went back, he's played 28 playoff games. He's averaging 14 and 5, 39% shooting, 32% from three, 10.8 per.

That's low.

Wind shares minus 0.2. I looked up, I'm like, Those numbers are pretty bad. I'm going to look this up. How many guys post-merger in the playoffs? Thirteen plus points per game, 39% or worse field goal, 30 plus minutes a game, and they played 27 plus games. How many guys have that profile? There's only five. D'angelo Russell, Ron Artest, Muki Blalack, and Vernon Maxwell. And that's it in the last almost 50 years of the league. So my point is D'Angel Russell, maybe this is why you're in Trade Rumors for December and January. He played really well this season, but he just says for whatever reason, has not been able to play well in the playoffs. And they're not going to beat Denver once if he can't play well.

I can't believe he sustained it as well as he did throughout the regular season. You brought up the Trade Deadline Theory. It may be 100% true. And at one point, I was like, Okay, cool. He had a good month. I was like, Wow, he had a really good second month. I was like, All right, I guess he's just not going to miss any shots anymore. But there's something about his pace that when it's working, it's like, oh, he's so in control. He plays with this great pace. But sometimes that pace is so slow. It's a little bit like Dallas's start today, but there are plays, they put the two guys at the elbows, and it's up to him to figure out which side he wants to go to. It may be predetermined anyway, but I think a lot of times a player like him would have the freedom to figure out what he wants. He doesn't even really pick what he wants to attack. It's one thing to miss a bunch of shots, but on the other end, it's Denver. It's the playoffs. You have to stay glued to your guy defensively. He comes off screens like it's the first quarter of a game in October.

So obviously, everybody knows that I'm not the biggest fan, but I was shocked that he was able to sustain it this long. But this is somebody against Denver last year that averaged six a game. His shooting splits were 32 and 13 %. He got benched in game four. Look, it's game... I think the alarming part of this, and it's something that you've brought up before, is you're getting these full seasons from Davis and LeBron. Okay? Uninterrupted full seasons from Davis, who's had his stuff and LeBron, who usually miss his time. And when you put those numbers together, the other thing that I brought up with New Orleans is the top two guys. If you look at the point differential with your top two guys in the team, it usually is a pretty sturdy number. And for the Lakers, even with that, it just hasn't really been strong enough with those two guys on the plus minus side of things in comparison to the other two best players for other teams. And they start with Rui on Jokić. People seem to think that that solves... Jokić, first of all, is unsolvable, which we all know, but he was 8-9 against him.

So then what are you going to do? You're going to ask LeBron to defend him because it looked pretty good a couple of times because he's just smarter about... You can't do that to LeBron. And now you're asking Davis to carry you with 30 and 15, but then also play Jokić for the full 38, 40 minutes, and he's going to be out there. It was a very Denver game. You're going to think you're in this at some point. And even though Murray didn't shoot it well, he had a stretch. It's like we were talking about with Paul George. It was like a three-shot barrage from Murray that was huge. And then they start running away from him, and then Jokić is just playing with you knowing that he's in just total control. I mean, it's got to be the most horrifying scenario to be in for an opponent, especially to be at their place in a close game thinking you have a chance to pull it off.

Aaron Gordon was really good in that game, too. Lebron in the fourth quarter, we've seen him do this before, and I don't know if he was exhausted or if he was just mentally like, We can't beat these guys. But it was like you could see the little terminator light started flickering for him, where it was just like, you could see the hope drain from his body. It was interesting.

So he came in at 9:08, but it was 96,81, right? Comes back into the fourth quarter, immediately attacks, gets the free throws. He didn't take another shot. And I'm not even talking about the field goal attempt log.

He was passing. I didn't know what he was doing. I didn't really fully understand it.

Didn't take another shot until 1:20 left because I remember watching it, then I went back to go like, Wait, he wasn't... He just was out. And I don't know if that's because it was the first game or if he was tired or at that point, the score was pretty lopsided. So maybe he just thought, I don't really have it.

Saving it for the second game. You said something earlier. It clicked a light bulb for me. You said, Everyone knows I'm not the biggest fan. I think that's the title for your book. Each chapter is about somebody. Everyone knows you're not the biggest fan. And it's like, Chapter 3, D'Angel Russell. Who else is in that book? There's been some classics over the years.

Yeah, look.

Gary Bettman, does he get a chapter?

I don't think he's on the radar enough for me to do all that. I thought he was epilonic. Maybe if there's a paperback condition, including Gary Bettman chapter. But I don't really have any history with Gary Bettman, so that wouldn't really be it. Derek Carr?

Is Derek Carr in a chapter?

No, I like Derek Carr.

Oh, you do? Well, I just thought it was funny. Oh, Boogie Cousins. Yeah, that's a good one. Booky But Cousins is a good one. Serena said Boogie Cousins. What quarterback? There's no quarterback you're not the biggest fan of. Kirk Cousins?

I actually liked him a little bit more this year, but I'd say over the long haul, I feel pretty good about my cousin's position. I always think it's funny when somebody will be like, Oh, that's where your head's at. If I'm critical of somebody. It's like, Well, if I was what you thought I was, wouldn't Kirk Cousins be my favorite athlete of all time?

Yeah.

It's a good zag.

Kirk Cousins, great zag.

When Westbrook got into it with Washington I'll admit, I had a little Westbrook moment at home where he grabs Washington's arm. That was 100% on Westbrook. Then Westbrook grabs his arms down like, What are you doing to me? Then puts his... But to your point, he's playing to the crowd. He's finding a way to... If Westbrook's not in charge of anything, say the ball or possessions or the paperwork on your lease, if you were roommates in college, I just think Westbrook would a roommate where he break furniture right in front of you. You'd be like, Dude, that's my dad's table. You'd be like, No, I didn't. When you're running an offense for 40 minutes, I think that can be challenging. But in this role, and you were in the building, I think it's serving everybody well with this. So, yeah, I got to think of some more chapters. I don't think I want to write that book. Yeah, that'd be good. Do that in your part. Yeah.

It'll be a fun one. It'll be a quickly book.

It feels a little negative.

It feels a little negative. You think due negative? Well, maybe you could zag. I don't know, Mike and Mike I can write a book. I feel like you can pump one out.

Or when Cornheiser had one that just said, I'm back for the cash.

Yeah, I'm back for more cash. I have that book. We got two series left. Let's do Minnesota Phoenix because I got to be honest, I didn't learn that much from that game. Phoenix loses. It's the first time Minnesota beat them this year. It was 92-72 at the end of the third quarter. The instinct is to say, Whoa, Minnesota really laid one on Phoenix. But I didn't feel that way watching the game. That came halfway through third quarter. It was 7,167, Minnesota. Then they just traded misses for two minutes. Then all of a sudden, Ant got hot. When Ant gets hot in Minnesota, the crowd loses its fucking mind and the energy completely shifts. He had 14, I think, in the last five or six minutes of the He's talking shit to KD, and he puts on the cape. We've seen him do it. When he does it in Minnesota, the game's over. All of a sudden, it was 92-72. It was just this thing that happened. I don't know if I want to take away too much from Booker not being that good. He's five for 16. I didn't think he looked good, but he also had McDaniels on him, and he's going to have to deal with that.

But for the most part, I didn't take away that much. Home team is supposed to win game one, Minnesota win game one.

I love that you brought up the McDaniels point because you're watching it happen. I'd have to go back and look at Synergy or something to be like, Are they getting Booker enough screens to just get McDaniels off them? The problem with McDaniels, you're the primary ball handler, and that's what Phoenix is going to do here, is He's just on you. He takes such pride. I thought they were so physical with Booker, and it's like, Okay, well, you guys, we're going to get away with this? All right, I'm reaching, I'm grabbing. Good for McDaniels. He can get in a foul trouble because he could be so aggressive. But I'd I'd rather you be aggressive and flirt with foul trouble, especially when I'm not worried about relying on any of your scoring. Of all the different things that happened in the game that you could point to, the rebounding edge was absurd. They were plus 24. The bench was 48 to 18 in favor of Minnesota. The second chance point, 26 of the rebound stuff that we're talking about. But I think McDaniel's defense, and I have an aunt thought here in a second, but if you were looking for some...

Does this mean you roll out the small lineup to see what happens if Gober has to chase somebody? Because you think Katie attacking Kat is something that you'd feel good about. There's a couple of times I think Rudy ended up on him and you're like, All right, he should be able to get him. Because there's some part of this where you're sticking a three-point shooter in the corner that Rudy has to honor or does Rudy just play off of him so much? Because then you're thinking, Nerkich played, what, 25? I think Nerkich was 27 minutes. Okay, we got killed on the boards playing Nerkich 27 minutes. So if we go small, are we ever going to get a rebound? That's a good...

Nerkich is a good tweak of this one because it did feel like, Oh, is this the series for Nerkich? Sometimes that happens. Like Alvarado and OKC, sometimes it's not really the series for you.

But it might be worse, though, is my point. I'd imagine if you're down 2-0, I think the coaches do this stuff. They sit around and they think about a million different theories. Remember talking about having Golden State defend Tony Allen with a big, so you could just leave him roam, that stuff. It's like, Hey, let's get creative with some matchups here if we think we could just... I don't really know what the harm would be in being like, Hey, do you want to just try something for six minutes?

You'd enjoy that part the most from coaching, I feel like.

I think they'd be like, all right.

Like the 12:30, finally everybody's eating dinner. You're at the back of the steak house, you're like, Hey, what if we put Nurek and Chunt Mike Connolly? They're like, Shut up, facility. We need some stuffed mushroom caps.

But I think what I always try to prevent myself from doing, though, is just because a team lost. All right, abandon everything, and let's try something different. I'll never forget there was that Atlanta Bucks series, and Bud is probably one of the most stubborn coaches in the NBA, and that's why people get added them, but then it's like, Okay, Bud.

What was his name? What was the Goofy Center? Which Atlanta Bucks series are you talking about?

It was Brook Lopez. They had Brook in a certain... They had Brook in a certain coverage, and for one game, it just looked like, oh, my God, you might not be able to do this. It was just one of those, at least for me, a little reminder of how bad something can look in one game, 48 hours later, it's the same thing, and there's a completely different result. I think that's why coaches probably aren't in a hurry to get super creative, especially. But I would imagine, say, Phoenix loses this game, too. But I'm not even providing it. I'm not watching the game going, Oh, they've got to go small, try to expose Gobert, have him stuck in the corner, drag him away. If it's Grace and Allen, or if If it's Eric Gordon or if it's Royce O'Neill, does Gobert get stuck with one of those guys, or then they change it up, and now all of a sudden, Durant's on somebody else? I don't know what they do. They lost Kyle Anderson in that game with the hip part of it. Phoenix is too good. The fact that this team still won as many games as they did and closed as strong as they did against that schedule.

But the Ant part of it is really, I think, the best part because it's the national breaking out for him in a way, because there was expectations of like, Hey, if this guy's really that good, can he just do this his own offensively? This is what you have to do to be who we think he can be. I know I'm going here, but there's a possession with him. He had scored 11 of 15 of Minnesota's points. He's bringing the ball up. He crosses half-court. Phoenix is like, Let's send two to him. He had every right to take an absolute heat check of a three. That's what... He just was on fire.

Like Trey Murphy shooting that 30 footer today.

Trey had a couple today where I was like, And Ant just did the right thing. He's like, All right, I could force this here. And all he did is swing it. And it's such a simple thing in basketball. It's like, okay, they showed you what they want to do defensively. Just move it to one of the sides and then just get it back. Because they never do the same thing that they started the possession with defensively. It's not like, Hey, double. I mean, it's just one of those things that seems to happen in basketball. And then he hits a three. And he could have taken the three and forced it. He didn't. He passed. He got it right back. The Phoenix, Phoenix defense was different. Then he took another three. I'm like, Man, that maturity from him in that moment where he's feeling himself, most, I think, Alpha, 1A score type guys are like, Ah, screw it. I'm taking this three because I've earned it with what I've just done in this quarter.

Edwards, did you see that stat about his first 12 playoff games?

I did.

28.5 points a game. The class He's in. It's in this Luca, MJ, Donovan Mitchell, Sean Morant, LeBron, Tracey McGrady, basically. It's the seven. It was awesome. I still feel like Phoenix will spend heading into game two. How do we get Booker going here? Because McDaniels is tough, but we're not winning this series if Booker is shooting 40%. So that'll be the big thing they try to fix. Then will they get wacky with the centers? I don't know. Booker will be the- I have no idea. For a game, too. Yeah. Right. How do you understand not a small injury if he's really hurt.

It's also a counter to going small if you wanted to match them. If you felt for a quarter like, Oh, wait, what we're doing defensively. But he wasn't there. Alan missed, I don't know, he sprained his ankle later.

Well, Allen was another one because we talked about Russell before. I was like, Oh, you're a good regular season guy. You suck in the playoffs. Grayson Allen, good example of that. When you mentioned the Budenholzer, the Atlanta-Milwaukee series, I got excited because I thought you were going backwards. I got confused for a second, but made me think of the Pierrot Antich series for some reason. One of the great series. That'll be like if there's ever another lockout or another COVID shutdown, we're just doing an hour on that series when Pierrot-Antich When he ruined Roy Hubbert's career in the Atlanta-Andiana series and created Small Ball. Everyone thinks Steph Curry created it. It was Pierrot Antich and that weird Hawks team. Remember? They pulled the center out 25 feet from the basket and people were like, What are they doing? And he made two threes. We're like, Oh, my God! What is this? And now we have basketball. That's how everyone plays.

That could be a chapter in your book. It could be a chapter in your book. You've got the D'Angelo Russell chapter on who he is historically against I didn't like hearing my guy, Jamal Mashburn's name brought up in that list.

Listen, the stats are the stats.

It's like Hibbert went to bed one night and he woke up the next day and they're like, Hey, you're no longer needed. Immediately.

He's like, I'm not in this loan conference this year. They're like, No, We've refunded your plane ticket. All right, last series. New York and Philly, our favorite series. I'll do my takeaway for this one. I said this two years ago after Boston, Brooklyn, game one, and I think you thought I was a little crazy. I think sometimes the series can be decided in game one, and I think this was one of those games. I think the Knicks won the series in game one. I think they're going to win the series. I've been saying forever, I don't think Embiid is going to get through two weeks. He almost seemed like he wasn't going to get through game one. We're going to talk about Embiid later after we finish this. But I just think they had to have that game. I talked to a couple of people that went, and there's two types of Knicks fans. There's these Knicks fans that go and they're just, Oh, my God, the Knicks are good. This is so much fun. Then there's the diehard fucking Knicks fans who remember the Charles Smith game, and they remember Bernard going head to head against Larry in 84, and they remember the Ewing finger roll.

It's like, this is deep embedded, oh, my God, the Knicks are good again. How far can we go? And they really care. I think that game at some point became, if we lose this game, we're fucked. We might lose the series. Josh Hart had a couple of threes. Embiid went over for five in the fourth and died. They just pulled it out. They got a crazy Deuce game. Deuce was plus 37. Deuce hit all these threes, and then Josh Hart hit the two classic no, no, no, no, yes, threes. But I thought Philly played. I thought Maxi, that was the best two-way game I think I've seen him play in a big spot. They got a really good hour and a half from Embiid, and I just think the Knicks needed it. I think it would have been really bad to lose that. Brunson wasn't that good. They were throwing some weird shit at him, and they pulled it out, and they fought their 55 to 33 rebounds. I think that's going to be the game. You hate when I do this.

No, I don't, because Embiid, looking the way he looks right now, you're right. I'm not going to say, Hey, it's over. You feel stronger about it than I do. If Embiid were healthy, okay? If Embiid, through the whole game, looks like healthy. Okay, but say he were healthy, Embiid, you wouldn't be saying the Knicks won the series in game one, right?

I would not.

Right. So it has way more to do with how Embiid looks to close this game.

From the moment he went down. Yeah. But just in general, it's one thing to do well in the regular season, but sometimes you got to You just got to pull it out, and they pulled it out. And the crowd was great. They've lost a lot of those, too, over the last few years where it's like, The crowd's so hyped, and then they do a Goose egg. Some weird stuff in this game, though, for instance, Kyle Lowry was unbelievable.

Yeah, 18. You got 18 from Kyle Lowry and you lost.

And was Kyle Lowry? It was like Kyle Lowry out of a time machine from three, four years ago and doing all the Kyle Lowry shit, including- That layup file they gave him. What about the three when he figured out how to get Hartenstein to step on his foot on the three somehow?

The next dude with without Grimes playing.

I caught what he did there. I thought he was really good. You know who wasn't good? Who might be irrelevant, Buddy Heel. What happened to that guy? He played 11 minutes. That was their big deadline move.

Hey, man, you've got the one thing that all these teams have wanted to trade for is your shooting. Yeah. So do it. What happened?

He's like, Yeah, I get used to him being. What's his excuse? This is it. Just make some open shots. This is why you're in the loop. Just shoot.

No, I don't even care if you make them. Take them. And so he doesn't seem to want to shoot. So Lowry is like, All right, you're not going to shoot. You've got the Tobias-Harris minutes. He played 31 minutes. Did you remember?

He had nine rebounds. I looked it up.

Here's the funny thing.

I don't remember eight of them.

I liked what Philly did with Brunson.

Me, too.

I thought it was this extended one, three, one thing where they were basically, whichever side he goes to, we're sending two over there. We're not going to let this guy just get in the middle of the paint and eat us alive. And so when you look at his line, you go, okay, that actually worked out. The problem is, his heart hits those three threes in the fourth quarter. Mc Bride has his night. And then O. G, who... My biggest thing with him when his contract gets settled here, and I know what the record is with him, it's ridiculous, but he's not really somebody you're throwing the ball to being Okay, now go figure something out. And then he hits a three. I bet money that the Sixers coaches watch the film and go, Hey, what we did worked. It's just that all the other guys made all of their shots. So I don't know that I would deviate from that too much. But all of this is a huge question mark because I'm with you. This is how it's going to start the play-outs with Embiid. This is how it looks from the beginning. And we didn't even think he was going to come back in the second half.

I didn't think he was going to come in the second half of the Orlando game. So credit to him for even getting back out there. But if this is what it looks like now, and if I'm the Knicks, and it reminded me of the Butler game, remember Butler turned his ankle big time, and it was like, how come the Knicks aren't attacking him at all? The guy can barely walk, he's still out there. I would be putting Embiid in so many... I didn't even care how many points I scored in the first quarter. I would try to make him move and show against Brunson because he doesn't really have any interest in it, so he might not even do it. But I would try to... It's like running the football. I would try to get him moving early to just wear him out.

I was talking to a Philly fan friend of mine, and we had a serious conversation about whether Philly should only play Embiid in the second half of game two. And just try to get a good hour out of him and whether that was a good idea or not. This was an unironic conversation because he's dead at the end of these games. That fourth quarter, he had gotten hurt before that, but 0 for 5, no on a shot, and just looked like he was dragging his ass around. It's like, Can we get two quarters out of this dude? Can we survive in the first half? I don't know. It was an interesting topic. We decided he should just play the whole game. I think that was the controversial outcome of the conversation.

The problem is that he still is going to get you buckets. So even if it doesn't look great or physically, if that's the beauty of his talent, that it's still brutally to deal with. By the way, we hadn't even mentioned it yet because the Hartenstein minutes, they declined. Mitchell Robinson played his ass off in this game.

I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, that was the big reason they had such a rebound advantage. It was an old-school Mitchell Robinson game.

You know how hard it must be to be like, Hey, you're not going to win most of the transactions against the guy you're going up against. You're going to look bad. You're going to get foules called on you. It's going to be really frustrating. He's going to put up big numbers, and he's huge. You're going to be dealing with the whole time. But I still need you to have that effort all the way. And by the way, you're never going to be allowed to shoot. We're never going to pass you the ball, which he's posted on Instagram isn't exactly his favorite thing. He'd like a few more touches. So his effort, that's what you expect from Tib. It's what you expect from his team when you watch them all year long. I just I just hope Embiid can play enough that we have a series because there's no point in even breaking down what it's like without him. But I've heard some people talk about like, Hey, if it looks this bad, then just shut him down for next. I don't even know how many more chances you get. I know he turned 30 in March, but if you look at video of Embiid- Wait, this is our next segment.

Okay. Let's hold it. Hold it. We're going to wrap up the YouTube stream. Okay. We're going to do Embiid and Kauai and a couple of other things. It's podcast only. We're wrapping up the YouTube stream. I liked it. I thought it was energizing. I thought there was a hop in your step that I hadn't seen in a while. It reminded me of Tina Fée in Date Night. We're just like, Oh, we're going to this crazy restaurant. Oh, the Mafia is after us. I don't know if you've seen that movie. It's not very good.

I'm going to check it out, though. I'm sold. Yeah, check it out. They call me Mr. Red Light in Bristol.

Mr. Red Light, that was the nickname?

Yeah. They were like, You may not like him in the pre-show meeting, but when it's real, no one I'd want more.

Come on, he's right there. You can listen to the rest of this podcast, the Bill Simmons podcast, and we might do this again. This was fun. Thanks for joining us on YouTube. All right, we're still here. We're going to talk Embiid because this is really one of the most unusual careers of any great player. He looks like he's in peril again with this knee injury that he has. I'm not sure if he's going to make it through the round. You don't know if he's going to make it through each game. In the playoffs, he's played 56 of 64 games. They're 29 and 27 when he plays in the playoffs. He averages 24 and 11. He shoots 46%, 20% from three. 21.8 PR, 9.3 free throw attempts a game, 34.7 minutes a game, 1.7 blocks a game. The stats don't look like what his regular season stats look like for the most part. He has five round one wins in his career. 2018 Miami round one. Can you name the best part on that team?

In 2018?

2018 Miami. I don't know. Boren Dragge. Yeah, the Dragge. That was the one Justice Winslow year where they were like, We think we figured them out.

Everybody was like, Justice Winslow had the highest approval rating for the lowest PER, maybe.

Yeah, I was in on them. They beat 2019 Brooklyn. That was the Levert Dilo, Jared Allen, Dinwiddie team. They beat 2021 Washington, Westbrook Beale. They beat 2022 Toronto that won 48 games, Siakam VanVleet, rookie Scottie Barnes, Ogie. That was probably the best of the wins. Then last year, beat the Brooklyn team, post-KD trade. That didn't have anybody. Five round one wins and then six playoff series losses that we can go through. I think we're headed for a seventh one here. I don't know how much of this is just horrible luck, and it might be all of it. But I do know that I haven't quite seen a career like this, Rosillo, and I don't even really know how to put it in perspective. This was one of our big assignments for the podcast. Where did you land? What did you come up with?

Who was he like?

No, just where we are with him. He's 30 years old. I don't know if this gets better from a health standpoint because we've seen with great players that injuries start adding up. What is the light at the end of the tunnel here? If you're like, Hey, this guy is still going to win a title someday.

I don't know how you can bet on it, and it's not really even about him, the player. The playoff drop off for the efficiency stuff is significant. I know you've run through it here, but when I was looking at it this morning, I'm like, Man, it's even worse than I thought it was. You start digging through the game logs. You're like, There's just a lot of bad games in there. And we don't treat him like some of the other players that are in the MVP conversation for having bad games because I think he's had the Ben Simmons Atlanta series. And he's been hurt. It's one thing if he's healthy and he's playing like this, but he's been hurt. Every single year, there's something.

I have that list, by the way, after you're done.

Okay. I don't know why this all of a sudden gets better post-30.

That's why we're doing this segment because when you start putting a bunch of injuries on somebody, the trend in the league with the history of it with the good players is that the arrow usually starts pointing down after a while. We saw this happen with Blake Griffin, where Blake Griffin had a bunch of different injuries, and then all of a sudden, Detroit was probably his last day in that one Detroit year, and then his body just started breaking down. Now, he's had some bad luck injuries. 2018, They lost to Boston in five in round two. Orbital fracture, concussion, right? Not his fault. Can't blame him on that, obviously. 2019, round two, lost to Toronto in seven. Knee tendinitis. He was bad in that series for him.

He had the He had a left knee issue that year where he missed 14 games after the All-Star break. Right.

2020, round one, they got swept by Boston, no injury. 2021, round two, lost to Atlanta in seven had a torn meniscus. 2022, round two, lost to Miami in six. He had a torn thumb ligament from earlier in the playoffs, then had another orbital fracture concussion. This guy had that twice, which is horrible. 2023, last year, lost to Boston in seven, had a knee sprain that he played with. And then this year has the meniscus. It's a lot of injuries, including knee tendonitis, torn meniscus, torn meniscus again in a knee sprain, and not to mention all the stuff that he had early. But the reason it's so fascinating is I did my pyramid and I have all the best centers ever. Just in descending order, the top level, Russell, Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Hakeem, Moses, all of those guys, by the time they were in Embiid's age, they'd either been in the finals or won a title. The next level, Jokuj, he won a title. The next level, Walton won a title early. David Robinson, conference finals a bunch of times, at least twice, right? With San Antonio, maybe once. Maybe, I think twice. Willis Reid won a title.

Dave Cowens won a title. Patrick Ewing got to the finals, was always in the mix there. George Micken was a million years ago. Then even you go down the level two guys, Wes Unzelt made the finals in his third year. Nate Thurman, he was in the finals. Dwight Howard, he made the finals, 2009. Bob McAdoo did not make the finals until he was a role guy with the Lakers. But I just listed 6, 7, 10, 13, 17 centers that are probably the 17 best centers in the history of the league. And then Beats had less success than everybody except McAdoo at this point. So it's not like nothing's happening here. And yet it's weird because I don't know how much you can stick them with. It really seems like most of this is just bad luck.

I definitely think it's on the bad luck side more than it is anything else. But I've said this for a long time now, watching how some of these tighter playoff games have closed out. This is why this position We've evolved from this traditional center position, even though he's not a traditional center with his touch and his shooting ability and the way you got to get him shot. But the most valuable guys are the guys that can have the ball in their hands and then figure out how to set up their own offense or offense for everybody else like Jokić. Those are the most valuable guys.

But you could say Embiid was like that in the first part of the regular season, right? He was scoring 35 a game. You could say, Well, this should maybe translate.

He was on track for a 35 PER, But I don't know that he would have held that up. I mean, it would have been the highest of all time. I don't know that that was going to happen if he played 65 games. He's never played 70 games in the season. But I think there's a slight limitation for him offensively in comparison to the other... And I'm not just talking about scoring numbers and his averages and his shooting and all that stuff. I'm just talking about he needs to be set up just a little bit more than the other four or five best players that we think about in the league. I feel that way Other people will disagree. But this is someone that I've been making mistakes on for a while. When I go back to the draft, I liked him better than everybody else. You're like, Okay, so wait, he's getting foot surgery? All right, well, now what do you do with him? And then he sits out the first two years, which you could say was complications in the foot surgery, but let's face it, he didn't want him playing out there. Then he plays 31 games in his third year, and then he's coming up for a contract.

I made a huge mistake with my opinion on it, was just, I don't know that I'd want to give this guy nine figures all of a sudden. And then it turns into he's got the MVP. Some would argue he should have a second one. I wouldn't. But he gets the one last year, and that's the whole point. So he's actually surpassed what I thought he could be because I go, who has a start of his career that way? And then it all just works out.

You're supposed to be a bust with the way his career started, not a potential MVP down the road who actually wins the MVP.

Where are you with him as being the face of your franchise?

I just wouldn't trust it. We've seen enough at this point. He's going to be 31 next season. He's a big dude, right? You've stood on a court that he's been on the court with. He's a big dude that carries a lot of weight and structurally has just had a bunch of things happen to him now. If If I'm a Philly fan, I'm like, Oh, yeah, we got him beat for the next five, six years. Would you feel like you had him for the next five, six years? It's almost like you're taking it year by year because you don't know how his body is going to respond because each year it's something else. And watching him There's another debate about whether he should even be playing in this series.

Yeah, that's why as we're talking this all out, you can feel incredibly unfair because you're like, Hey, you guys, he's not healthy. Why are you guys doing this now? Because this is the point.

He's 100% not healthy. He threw an alleyup off the backboard to himself, came down like he was shot, and came back later.

It's the same way I feel about Kawhi where it's like, Yeah, he's awesome. But is he going to be there? It's just different. It just means there's other guys I'd rather have than him that aren't as good as him, which I think is totally reasonable.

All right, so let's say Josh Harris called us. Let's say Philly loses to the next in round one and Embiid goes trying to recover, get in shape for next season. Josh Harris is like, What do you think I should do? Because I could move on from this and get a player back in a bunch of picks. Or when you have somebody who, when he's healthy, is one of the five best players in the league, hands down. How can you give that up for an unknown blank? You can't. So you have to ride it out. I just don't know what you do. It's unsolvable. I I don't know if there's been a lot of situations like this. I thought the Clippers made a mistake when they extended Kawhi because to me that just felt like, Hey, let's just see a healthy year before the money will be there. We'll take care of you at the end of this season. Let's see how this looks. Kawhi, which I think is an important piece of the Embiid conversation. Kawhi goes to the Clippers. He plays 13 to 13 playoff games in 2020. He plays 11 and 19 and 21, gets hurt, misses the last eight.

Misses the whole next season, no playoffs. Last year, he plays the first two, gets hurt again, misses the last three. This year, he missed the one today. He's played 26 to 38 playoff games.

I'm surprised it's that high.

But he also missed 2022, and they missed the playoff. So really, it's even more than that. And was not available to finish three of the last four postseasons, basically. And they just extended him. And it's like the MB thing. I don't know how that gets better. It's like, oh, man, remember those four rough kawaii years? But now he's totally healthy. I just don't see it. I don't see it because I've been following basketball long enough that when guys just keep getting hurt, it usually doesn't get better. When they hit their 30s, it gets worse. I know medicine's better, and I know training's better, and we know our body's better.

He's got to get smaller. He's got to get smaller. I don't understand. He's got the knee injury, so I can't imagine there were many cardio options for a guy that big that's trying to rush back to even get back to even play in the A credit to him that he's even going like, No, I'm not shutting this down. I want to be out there. I want to try to figure this whole thing out. But the second he came back, you were like, Uh-oh. And he still put up 30. So I would think the biggest thing for him to try to... Because I don't think any sane person would disagree with us on this one. If you're asking this simple question, Hey, here's the timeline of the last five years, and this is how it's gone. This is what it looked like yesterday, and project the next five years. If you're sitting there going, Oh, no, it'll all work out. Well, okay. Telling the team that they would have to do something with him, that's not going to happen. Because if MB was available tomorrow, say in a free agent world, everybody would just pay him.

Because I think a lot of these transactions are, All right, but what if we have a It makes sense that this guy is this good. I think that's what the Kauai thing is. And granted, the Clippers don't have their pics. They're moving to the new place.

That was the Hard and Trade, too. It was the combo of the Kauai extension and the Hard and Trade. At least we have a chance. We can sell some hope to our fans.

Yeah, right. This doesn't make a ton of sense. So, yeah, there's tons of downside, a lot of risk. But what else are we going to do with our money? So they've got to be under control for two more years as a player option back there. So it's not like you even have to worry about that part of it. You would probably just say, okay, we need to do whatever we can to get him as healthy as possible and take another shot at it because when you know he's right, he's one of the five best players in the world, and that's all we're going to do. Now, it'll be really interesting to see what happens with their cap space. And if they don't get Paul George, and if it's a bunch of one year deals to take another shot at cap space again, is Embiid going to be patient? That could be the thing where it would be different because I'm always on the lookout for the next guy that would say, Okay, this isn't working for me.

But I think- It's going to be somebody from round one who loses.

Absolutely. We're doing.

Yeah. Let me ask you this. The Lakers get knocked out in round one, and Philly gets knocked out in round one, and Josh Harris runs in the Genie bus, and they're having wine, and one thing leads to another, and they start talking about Embiid and Davis. Should we just flip them for each other?

Is Jaymore there?

Jaymore is there. He's intrigued. He's always liked Embiid, thinks he's funny. Who pauses longer on that conversation, Philly or Los Angeles?

La do it. La would do it in a second. So I think the pause is from Harris. Because then the problem is, this hypothetical, which we shouldn't be doing after game one. All right, we shouldn't. We both know that.

Listen, this is what we do in podcast. This is what we do. We have dumb conversations and talk them out. This is the whole point of a podcast.

I love it. All right, so now that we've said that, don't try this at home, right? Like a little warning line. You couldn't be Darryl and the entire group and go, okay, cool, we have this transaction. Now what? Now what do we do?

Is there no way he's trading- David is maxing in Capspace? I like it. I like it. I like it for both teams. It reminds me of when Penny Hardaway got, when he signed with Phoenix. Remember the Orlando thing? Just too much stuff had happened. Then he went to Phoenix. And Orlando was like, We're devastated. But deep down was like, I'm not sure how many more good years that guy has.

Remember when Phoenix was apparently the only place you could go if you had injuries? If this were '04, guys, the podcast would have started be like, You got to get Embiid to Phoenix, something in the water.

I think the Embiid we're watching right now is carrying too much weight, and it's dangerous, considering the stuff that has happened to his lower body. Next year, who knows? It's a tough one. When he went down, I thought his season was over and next year was done. He looked that bad when they showed he was lying on the ground. It's It seemed like his eyes were rolling in the back of his head. He looked like Gechi. It was like, Oh, my God, this guy just blew out every... And then 20 minutes, he was back. It's a roller coaster ride, Man, the draft was 10 years ago. This is now a full decade of Embiid. I don't think Philly fans, they're in the same position they were in when they drafted the guy and he had a broken foot where they're like, We don't know what we're getting from this dude. But when he's out there and he's feeling it, this is the who was averaging more points than minutes played in the season, which I don't know if anyone had done that since Wilt. So you're probably right. Philly's got to be like, All right, we got to talk ourselves back into this one.

The Kawhi thing, I just think is nuts that they extended him. I didn't understand it when it happened. I just don't understand it. That's the thing that just absolutely murders you for three, four years, if you're wrong on that one. Flipping around to a more positive note. I was thinking about this Jokuj four-year run. This would be year four of just what an unbelievable playoff performer he's been. He's one of the greatest playoff performers in the history of the week, which I don't think gets mentioned that much, if not ever. 2021, 2022, 2023, and then first game this year, he's averaging 30 points a game, 13 rebounds and 8 assists. He's a 54, 41, 80 percentage guy, 31.6 per per, which is like levitating above just about anybody. He's 0.301 win shares per 48. It's just like it's obscene. I was like, I wonder if anyone's even close to this in the last 50 years and went through. The closest I could get, LeBron from 15 to 18, averaged 31, 10, and 8, but some of the advanced stuff wasn't as good. Jordan from 90 to 93 was 34 points a game, 7 and seven.

Then the legendary Bird, 84 to 87, 27, 10, and 7, and was almost 50, 40, 90. And then Giannis was the only other one I could find, where 19 to 22 is 29, 13, and 6. Does Jokuj get credit for being an unbelievable playoff performer? Because I don't think he does.

Not to the level. Lakers fans talking themselves into it. I'm like, Wait, didn't you guys just see what happened last year? It just happened.

It was a year ago.

People talk about him being the worst MVP. They're like, What? What is going on with you guys? Here's what I ask you. We have had... I mean, it's hard when you start going top 10 all time. Who are the unassailable top 10s in NBA history for I'm sure you have these off the top of your head.

Well, I remember Curry. It took forever for him to get to the 10th spot for me. It's basically Curry versus Kobe for that spot. Heading into this season, I had Jokuj 19th. I had him as the third highest guy on the level below the Pantheon. If he goes back to back, he goes in the Pantheon.

All right.

I think he's against... At that point, it's him versus Moses and Shaq and Hakeem, and we start arguing about that. That's the territory he's in if he wins again.

Okay. Because This is good. All right. Right now, it's Jordan, it's Magic, it's LeBron, it's Bird, it's Bill Russell, it's Kareem, it's Duncan, Will. Yeah. That's an eight.

Yeah. There's Jerry West is in there, Curry.

Jerry West is top 10 for you, and then you have Curry, say, 10th. Just to do this off the top. All right. If you look at the guys that have been rolling through this generation, you're like, Okay, Curry gets in there. I would have no issue with it.

Obviously, I'm a fan of boys' time. I have Curry, 10th, and I have Durant, 16th, out of the new guys.

I think most people would say... I think Kobe is more popular than Steph, so I think there'd be more people saying, You guys should have Kobe over Steph. Whatever. It's fine.

It's a really good argument because Kobe had more LMAs, he has more points. You could argue this Steph run is coming to a close, at least from a postseason standpoint. Kobe's postseason resume is better. It's a good argument.

There's also the holes that Kobe has in comparison to LeBron, where you're like, Hey, what happened there? Steph has those, too.

Steph has three of the last five years, doesn't win a playoff game. Right.

One year, he played five games.

I'm just saying three of the last five.

Just, hey, add in context. Hakeem, I get really defensive about, probably more defensive of any player in history of like, I really don't want to have this guy outside of the top 10. I think I'll always say it, I think he's the most underrated superstar that I can think of in NBA history. If those are the 10, all right? And say, if Kobe is your 10th, I'm not going to argue about it.

We were projecting- Right now, Kobe is my 10th right now. I have Curry, ninth, Kobe, 10th, Jerry West, 11th. I don't know what Jerry did. He dropped behind those guys, but it happened.

Was it a recent podcast interview? Just like, you know what?

I'm not moving them down to 11th. I don't know what it was. I don't know what he did.

Could have been Curry's, I don't know, fourth another All-MBA. The point that I'm trying to make here is that there was a movement of like, Hey, Durant could end up top 10 all time. Steph could end up top 10 all time. Giannis, what is the finished product of Giannis? The point that I'm making in reference to Jóhkitch is that if Jóhkitch gets another one here, and he's what, year two or three of this five-year window, and I think he's also going to age really well, he's probably going to pass all of these guys. This is the level that he's at. So for anybody to arguing of where he's at in today's game, I don't even know that that's an argument anymore. That's why I had no issue whatsoever voting for him for MVP. I just went like, Look, I know what the other numbers are. I know what the arguments can be. If you really want to get in a seating, we're separating it by a game here or there. I mean, go ahead if that's your tiebreaker. I think it's a ridiculous tiebreaker. But the control that he has over the game, and then you look at historically.

He has the highest career P-E-R in playoff history. He's ahead of Jordan. He's ahead of LeBron. Number one, the highest... Again, there's nobody higher than him. Now, granted, later on as he ages, that can dip. At one point, I remember Zack Lo arguing Chris Paul and his Death to the Rings piece that came out a decade ago, and I absolutely loved it because he was like, Look at Chris Paul's efficiency stuff here all time. He was a top 10 guy. He's still, I think, 14th on this list. He's 16.

It gets tough when you get older. It hurt Kobe, too.

Jokuj may age behind Michael Jordan, but there's a good argument to look at this now and say all these other names that we've talked about, being in the absolute top 10 list of NBA players, Jokuj is positioned to surpass these guys because the Durant argument becomes really complicated, I think, because this is all Jokuj. This is his team. It's just going to ding Durant when you're comparing him to the five other guys that he's supposed to go ahead of. And unless he gets another one in Phoenix, it's going to be hard for him once he's done to go, Hey, I'm going to put Durant ahead of Hakeem or Steph or some of these other guys. He's just not going to pass those guys.

The spot Jokuj can get to is in that Duncan Bird magic territory, that 5, 6, 7, 8 range. He's got three MVPs in the last four years. He finished second the other year. He's about to win back-to-back titles.

Well, we don't know that yet.

But I'm saying he's the favorite to do it. And it It goes back to what we're talking about with Embiid. In a way, knock on wood, it's like the opposite of Embiid because there's something so insanely durable about him. I feel the same way about Luca, actually, too. The speed they play, I just don't see a lot of potential for terrible injuries with those guys. The way they move, the way they carry themselves and their bodies, some guys are just durable. We haven't seen really any Jokage injuries that I can remember. He played 79 games this year. He's going to play 20 to 25 playoff games again, and he's just going to come back the next year. Duncan was pretty durable, too. Some guys are just durable. But I think that's where he ends up, and I think he's that good, and I think it's justified. And the stats back it up. And that's why I brought up that four-year... I think four years is a nice way to look at players, because if you have a four-year peak or a four-year snapshot, that's a long time. It's a It's somebody going to college and graduating.

It's a long-ass time. If you're that good for that long, it's meaningful in a different way. So that would be my argument for Jokuj. A couple of quick things, and then we'll wrap up. I had some quickies for you. You ruined Amir Koffie for me. You're welcome. I just kept... First of all, he's good. He's a legitimately good role player. But I kept thinking about Amir Khafi face, how brilliant that was. If you could save one person for the rest of the playoffs and just immediately make them 100%, almost like in a video game, give them 100% health, just for the sake of making the playoffs more fascinating, would you give 100% health to Zion, Kawhi, and Beter Yannis going forward? Can only pick one.

Zion.

You love Zion. When Zion started taking it to LeBron, was that the most exciting moment of the decade for you? Right. You had a more exciting moment?

I would say right behind him blitzing the point guard against Milwaukee in that game. I even texted somebody from the Pelicans. I was like, Hey, man, those two blitzes. I think it took 48 hours for the guy to get back to me and be like, Oh, cool, man. Hope you're well.

I talked about this with Mahoney briefly, but Have you ever seen LeBron get overpowered on a basketball court before? Because I had never seen it. The only time I could remember was when he lost the jump ball to Paul pierce in 2008, game seven when he was young. And Paul pierce just was stronger and got to the ball. That was probably the last time he's been overpowered on a basketball court. And Zion just worked him like a speed bag for an hour. That was unbelievable. And then now he's 39, and this is the law of nature in the NBA, but that was unbelievable.

So All right. I have long struggled with announcers on LeBron games because you have to go all in on worshiping him. But then it can get in the way of just normal stuff. When he dunks, it's like he's fucking 39. He's not 89, and he's 6'8. He probably can still dunk, all right?

Yeah, he's in great shape.

Then he dunks and somebody will be like, Looking like 21-year-old LeBron. You're like, No, not that.

We have that on YouTube.

Right. Then when he gets hurt, he's going to take a little extra time, and everybody loses their mind. When he took that charge from Zion. That was one where I was like, I can't believe he did that. It seemed like it's the only time I've seen someone slam into LeBron, where I was like, Okay, he felt that in a way that I don't think he's felt a collision on the floor in a long time. Because most of the time, if there's any collision, he's initiating, he's so powerful, he's just barreling through guys.

He'll milk it, he'll try to get a call. He was not milking anything. He was lying on the ground going, My soul just left my body for two seconds. What just happened in my life?

When the announcement are like, Oh, my God, 21 seasons in. At that point, I'm like, Okay, this is when you use that stuff. Not when he dunks in the open court. He's 6'8. He should still be able to dunk. That moment, I'm like, I just had so much fun with it because it's this game and it mattered. They just gotten blown out by him. And Zion's entering. I mean, look, he's never even flirt with the Embiid level, despite some of the frustration we've had with Embiid's career. But there's this list of some of these players where you go, well, how long can I hitch my wagon to this? If this is who the franchise is? The problem is that Philly got really screwed on the Harden thing because that money should be playing somewhere else with Embiid. Luckily, New Orleans is drafted so well that, as we saw tonight in game one with O KC, even though you'd love a second option offensively that you could bank on, especially going up against Chet, where you feel like, okay, Chet is going to get him a couple of times. It's like, Zion is just going to go in strong every single time, and he just finishes against everybody.

So, yeah, I was going to say Embiid, but then when you gave me the Zion option, I had to go with him. You?

Zion during the Lakers game, that one hour was the most fun hour of the season because he was also rebounding and playing defense.

He's playing defense to his level, but he's into it.

He was showing us what we wanted for five years. I think if the question is, who would make the playoffs the most interesting if they were 100%, the answer is probably Kawhi. I don't know if that's my answer as a basketball fan. I still think the Bucs have some serious issues with their wings. I don't know if they have the athleticism and the speed to beat the Celtics. Maybe they do. Maybe I'm jigs in it. But I think if you put Kawhi in that Clippers team I watched today, that's a really interesting team, especially against the Nuggets. If Kawhi was 100% and you're throwing him out with all the other stuff they have because they're deep. They They have role players that are real role players like Powell, Koffie, Westbrook. What's his face? The Plumly? They bring in guys, and the guys are effective. The Plumly is like a good back of center. Terrence Mann had a double-double at halftime today. That team's deep, but Kauai is the straw that's to the strength. All right, second and last thing. In the row in front of us, this couple brought their young baby who could not have been more than four or five months.

They put the headphones on them, which I thought was smart. But I just would ban kids under one from sporting events. If I was a sports star, that would be one of my rules. I would include my own kids when I had small kids. It's not a place for little kids. The cousin of that is I went to a Laker game two weeks ago, and two different people sitting courtside had six-year-old kids sitting on somebody's lap. I just think that's a borderline child abuse thing. I couldn't be more against that because we've seen these games where guys go flying into that courtside, into any of the seats. You just never know. They're trying to get a loose ball. You're actually putting your kid in harm's way, and I'm against it. So sports are banned, those two things. You don't get to bring your kid courtside unless the kid's 10 and no baby's under one, out.

What if he's eight and a good rebounder?

Eight, I need some I think it should be like the rides at Disney where it's like, Oh, you're not three foot seven yet. You can't go on this ride. That's what courtside should be. If you could get run over by Yannis and have to go to the hospital, you shouldn't be sitting courtside.

I agree on the courtside thing. I went to a Celtics game once where there was a bunch of women and the kids were so young, and they were on their fucking phones. It was like, you're just doing this. This kid's a Birken bag for you. This is just an This isn't even a real thing. I just don't know what happens. I don't know what age it is. Maybe when you're like 38, north of 38, you start looking around for kids' safety. Even as a non-parent, I'm really on top of kids' safety scenarios. It's something I pride myself in, and I'm always looking at. But you think, okay, what if it's a five-month-old normal seat and the family? No. No. What if they just need to get out of the house? No. What if they move to the town? It's He's working remotely.

It's not a place for a five-month-old baby. Maybe they cut off for eight months.

She's got a new gig with a firm. You didn't want to move there. But there's no friends. You don't know anyone. You don't trust anybody. You're not in the mix right now. Don't go to the game.

Not everybody has to go to a basketball game. All right, here's the last thing. I'm going to read you this letter.

Letter? Are we doing letters?

I'm reading a letter that was written in the Boston Globe.

Oh, this is awesome.

You know this? Yeah, it's unbelievable. Oh, man.

Of course, I know this. Come It's so good. Share it. Yeah, of course. It's unbelievable.

All right, for the listeners, you might not know this. I'm writing this letter to voice my opinion about the rebuilding process of the Boston Celtics. Where has Celtic pride gone? The rebuilding of this once massive dynasty must begin now. We need to clean house, let players go, and clear up salary room for our draft pick. Although the draft is not incredibly deep this year, I do see a future star on the horizon. Jason Kidd from the University of California has the skills and pure basketball sense a superstar and savior of a struggling franchise. Kidd may well be the best passer in all basketball right now. He's only a sophomore in college. For the record, House and I fucking love Jason Kidd. I did not have a column or a podcast in 1994, but Jason Kidd was my guy. I was all in on him. Back to the letter. He has incredible skills, but what would impress coaches and scouts even more is his knowledge of the game. Very rarely did you see Kidd misuse the clock at the end of the game, turn the ball over under pressure, or make the wrong choice in the fast break.

The only weak part of his game is his outside shooting, although he struggled with the shooting percentage as a freshman. As a sophomore, there's dramatic improvement in this statistic. The last point I'll make, Jason Kidd is a winner. Kidd won three state championships in high school and took an unknown team to the elite in the NCA tournament, not to mention he knocked off defending National Champion Duke during his March showcase. The Celtics must realize that in order to rebuild, they need a solid nucleus, and that is a strong point guard to run the team. Jason Kidd is the franchise's chance to start to rebuild a team that was once the best in the world. Signed Sam Presti, Carlyle. Unbelievable. He basically lays out his entire blueprint for running Oklahoma City someday in this random letter to the Boston Globe in the mid '90s. I thought that was one of the craziest things I've ever read. Sam Presti knew the whole time what to do as a GM, and then he fucking pulled it off.

I loved it so much for two reasons. One, I really like Presti, and again, I think he's awesome at his job, but I also like him, but he hates this stuff. So I think once a year, I'll just be like, Hey, what do you think, man? And it's like, No. I don't want to do it. And now I think you have to have him on because you guys are kindred spirits. This is you. This is you.

He's my spirit animal. I texted him before the season, and I sent him the clip how I thought, Okay, see, he was going to win 50 plus games. I was like, I just want you to know, I did this on my podcast. I really believe this is going to happen. And congratulations to everything you built. He's a Boston guy. I root for the Boston guys.

Conquer Carla. Yeah.

He was appropriately embarrassed and did the whole, I hope you're right, and whatever, didn't say anything. He never said anything. Oh, yeah, that'd be great. I'd be happy to make the playoffs, whatever he said. But yeah, he has an actual strategy that he's stuck with. If you look at that Jason Kidd piece and all the things he liked about Jason Kidd, those are the players he goes after. Players who won in high school or in college or players who have just a competitiveness and an unselfishness. You watch the guys out there tonight and they're all like that. Maybe that's why he can't, at the trade deadline, figure out who to get because he's literally looking for a specific type of player. If that player isn't in that vision, he's out. We even washed up Gordon Hayward. He's like, Hey, this is the guy I like. He might be washed up, but who knows? Maybe he's not.

But Hayward is a little bit like, not a little bit like, Prime Hayward. The best part of him was that it was that he could create, he could get your offense started, he can make decisions with the ball.

The ball moved, make decisions fast.

So despite a diminished version of him health-wise, that stuff doesn't go away when you're just not the same athletically. So I think there's an economic part of it that was more of the motivation for clearing off the Mechich contract, but it fits the profile of all the players that he keeps putting on this roster. And OKC gets way too much shit when it comes to like, okay, well, finally. Think about it. They had the Chris Paul series with the Thunder where they thought he was just going to milk it. And he was like, what are you talking about?

I'm here to play. That went to seven and they almost beat Houston.

Right. Which Houston had no business going to seven with them in that series. And it came down to last game. So we cover that, right? Then they're not good, then they're not good. And then last year, you see the signs of it, and that's without their top pick and Chet even playing. So really, it was like a two-year dip. Do you know how many of these franchises would... It may be a compliment. Sometimes, when I I see Kaitlyn Clarke being criticized by so many people. I'm like, to be honest with you, it's way better than the other options.

Yeah, you're doing great.

Right. The first option is absolute praise, which I think is only Morgan Freeman. Okay. And then it's irrelevance, which is the worst of anything for public consumption. And for Kaitlyn Clarke right now, it's like, you're such a big deal now. Welcome to the club. Now you get to have people telling you what you can't do or why something that you're doing is actually being done wrong and all these different things. The Thunder, maybe because Presty has been so good that when they go through a two-year dip, it's like, what's wrong with them? And you're like, wait, compare their dip to some of these other franchises. And Presty turns it around this quickly, and if they're the one seed, and I'll have moments It's like even watching today, and I love that game. But I'm like, what if OKC pulls this off? What if they actually pull this thing off?

What if they make the finals?

Yeah, what if they make the NBA finals?

There was a two-seed, two seed two years ago. Crazy. Wallace was out there in crunch time, you know what I'm saying?

I did. He had the tip because they switched into him with CJ, and then he tipped the ball away, and that mucked that up. The funniest thing about the press deal letter is I was doing this at 26. Trying to get jobs with teams.

Yeah, still sending long letters. I was trying to think, can you think of anyone more mortified that that letter came out than Presti?

No one.

He was probably like, Oh, my. They finally found out about the letter. He must have been absolutely apoplectic. He's probably like, Oh, maybe this will never come out that I did this.

Right. It's like, actually, you were 16 and you were right. Yeah.

Sam Presti. Hey, this was a really fun podcast. I love going live. Thanks to Cory McDonnell for helping us out with the YouTube stuff. I thought I enjoyed how it went. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton for producing as well. Thanks to Rusillo. Enjoy the basketball. Hopefully, some of these series will get a little better than they did. It was good to see you. Yeah, man. Good stuff. Must be 21 plus, 18 plus DC, and present in select states, Fandle offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gamble problem? Call 1-800 Gamble or visit fandle. Com/rg. In Colorado, DC, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont. Call 1-800 next step or text next step to 53342 in Arizona, 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connecticate, 809 within Indiana, 800-522-4700, or visit ksgamblinghelp. Com in Kansas, 877-770. Stop in Louisiana, mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland, 800-gambling. Net in West Virginia, 800-522-4700 in Wyoming. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 1877-8 Hope, N-Y or call 1-877-8 Hope text Hope, N-Y in New.